Slaughterhouse Five

Characters and Themes

Introduction

Kurt Vonnegut

• The author and a minor character.

• Struggled to write the novel about his experiences during WII

Bernhard V. O’Hare 

• Bernhard V. O’Hare -  A wartime pal of Vonnegut. O’Hare appears when Vonnegut visits him and his wife in Pennsylvania while trying to do research and collect remembrances for his Dresden book.

Billy Pilgrim

• A World War II veteran, POW survivor of the firebombing of Dresden, prospering optometrist, husband, and father. Billy Pilgrim is the protagonist of the novel.

• Pilgrim has the unique ability to come “unstuck” in time.

• Uncontrollable/ “the trips aren’t necessarily fun”(23).

Mary O’Hare 

•  Bernhard O’Hare’s wife. Mary gets upset with Vonnegut because she believes that he will glorify war in his novel; Vonnegut, however, promises not to do so.

Gerhard Müller 

• The non-fictional taxi driver who takes Vonnegut and O’Hare back to their Dresden slaughterhouse.

War

• Remember, “war” in itself is not a THEME, but Vonnegut’s story SHOWS things about war.

• The absurdity of war

• The glorification of war

• The life-changing effects of war

• The destructiveness of war

Death

• The inevitability of death

• How do we, as humans, view death vs. the actuality of death?

• Should the fact that death is inevitable make it lose any of its sadness to us?

Time

• What are the properties of time?

• Chronological time vs. true time

• How do we, as human-beings, accept time’s properties?

Humanity vs. Dehumanization

• Lot’s wife as a pillar of salt• Vonnegut’s comparison to himself• War’s dehumanizing effects• I looked through the Gideon Bible in my motel room for tales of

great destruction. The sun was risen upon the Earth when Lot entered into Zo-ar, I read. Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from Lord out of Heaven; and He overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground. So it goes.

• Those were vile people in both those cities, as is well known. The world was better off without them. And Lot's wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human. So she was turned to a pillar of salt. So it goes. (Vonnegut 21-22).

Free Will/ The Illusion of Free Will

• 'Welcome aboard, Mr. Pilgrim,' said the loudspeaker. 'Any questions?'

• Billy licked his lips, thought a while, inquired at last: 'Why me?'

• 'That is a very Earthling question to ask, Mr. Pilgrim. Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?'

• 'Yes.' Billy, in fact, had a paperweight in his office which was a blob of polished amber with three lady-bugs embedded in it.

• 'Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why.' (Vonnegut 76-77)

MOTIF

• A recurring image, word, object, phrase, or action that tends to unify a literary work.

• Motifs lead the reader to understand the overarching themes.

• On the back of your paper, please answer the following question:

• what examples of motifs are present in your own life? What images, words, objects, phrases, or actions recur throughout your life thus far?